If memory serves correctly, a couple of weeks ago some vaguely important body (possibly the UN) decided we should all stop eating beef in an effort to curtail global warming. Naturally I ignored this command completely. I’ve better things to do than go around listening to possibly the UN.

It narks me somewhat that all of a sudden the media and large portions of the population have turned into Energy Facists who regard not using an energy saving lightbulb somewhere on a par with eating babies. Naturally I place the blame squarely at the feet of the Daily Mail.

The trouble with science is that it often gets rather complicated. The people charged with making it less complicated so the rest of us can follow what’s going on very often don’t understand it terribly well themselves. In any case, even if they did they only tend to have 100 words or so to explain everything so prefer to stick to short snappy phrases which imply our mutual destruction is imminent and that it is all our own fault. This means the paper sells and they can all go and drink until they are comfortably horizontal.The second trouble is that unscrupulous companies have marketing departments who have cunningly worked out that they can fold statistics until they resemble a balloon elephant and still be counted as true. Thus it is that products are marketed as being good for the environment and generally good for everybody when they are, quite patently, not.

Take recycled bog roll. You would think that using paper which already exists rather than chopping down shiny new trees would be the way forward whereas actually it isn’t. The process used to remove inks from the paper is far worse for the environment than chopping down new trees; far better to ensure the paper you use comes from a renewable source.Take cars. Look at all these celebrities driving those stupid Prius machines because they are apparently better for the environment. They aren’t. They do something like 45mpg. He Who Knows Everything gets 40mpg without trying and he is in a girt estate jobbe. If you want to drive a car that is good for the environment, why not get something tiny and light or, better yet, use your feet; they’re those things down there on the ends of your legs.Take this obsession with turning lights off all the time and not leaving your TV on standby. I’m all in favour of doing this because if everybody did it we would collectively save about 100 watts of energy every thousand years or so which is going to make a huge difference, obviously. A better idea is for people to start educating themselves about how to save energy properly.Solar Panels are a complete joke. They take a decade to pay for themselves to be installed. Ditto wind turbines. Ditto any other green energy product you can get from B&Q. If you want an environmentally sound home, build a timber frame house (sustainable product, easier to heat) and stuff every inch with the thickest insulation in existence. It’s simple and easy but people prefer to be taken in with the idea that technology can do the work for them. By all means go for the solar panels and the rest if you want because it does help a little, but really, begin with improving your insulation. I can’t stress that enough.And have you ever seen these mad yokes that calculate how much energy your house is using ostensibly so you can try and cut back? Am I the only person who sees the flaw in that plan?

I wonder if anybody at possibly the UN thought this whole vegetarian lark through before recommending we all take it up. For a start if we cut back on cows, we will all end up drinking Soy milk in our tea. To grow Soy beans, (I am reliably informed) swathes of important and ancient forests are chopped down destroying the vital habitats of many endangered species. As far as moral reprehensibility goes, it’s on a level with palm oil.Even if we imagine that they find a way to supply us all with enough milk for tea drinking goodness, if we are all vegetarians we will be eating lentils and chickpeas and things. While these can often be tasty (mmmmmm…. dhal….) one characteristic they share is a while on the stove. Generating heat uses more energy than any other process, if we all start cooking lentils more often I’ll bet you any money you like it will have a greater negative impact on the environment than you would gain by cutting back on cows.

So. My solution? Get rid of the vegetarians. You know it’s what Captain Planet was planning all along

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